ERA is a space in which individual stories of people having resisted against the terror, humiliation and despair fascism brought over Europe are kept alive and visible for everybody.

The resistance movement in Slovenia

Following the attack and defeat of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the ethnic territory of Slovenia then belonged to three occupying states, while Yugoslavia in its whole fell apart. The Resistance movement developed in reaction to this fact and the oppressive attempts of denationalization only augmented it. The German occupier immediately began to drive out the population and completely prohibited the usage of the Slovene language.

The Resistance movement initiated with its first actions of resistance in July 1941; while the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People was a resistance organization established already on the 26th of April 1941. Numerous members were involved already by autumn of 1941, and by the end of the year more than 2000 Partisans were active in the Partisan movement. The political left played a leading role in the resistance, the Communists being the most active. Aside from a few political groups, the two largest political parties until then did not join the Liberation Front. Contrarily, they worked against the Communists and the Liberation Front in 1942, their supporters even enlisting to collaborate with the occupiers in armed combat against the Liberation Front.

Initially, the Liberation Front was a coalition of political parties. It united into a uniform resistance organization in 1943. The Partisan units developed into an army within the framework of the Yugoslav Partisan army under the leadership of Tito. It counted 38.000 armed Partisans by the end of 1944. The Resistance movement engaged as a national liberation movement proclaiming as its goals to unify all Slovenians into a federative state within Yugoslavia and to establish a fairer society with just and ethical borders. It established a temporary state council in 1943; these state organs or people’s committees were introduced already during the war throughout a large part of the Slovenian territory, despite that it was actually liberated only in May 1945.

After the First World War the Slovene nation was divided between four states. The majority lived in Yugoslavia, while the minorities lived in then fascist Italia, after the Anschluss of Austria in the Third Reich and in Hungary. The last three states lead the politic of national oppression of their minorities and also on April 1941 occupied Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav part of the Slovene territory was divided between three occupiers and the Slovenes were condemned to disappear as nation.